Cracks
by chi-of-ink
Summary: Everything he's done, he's done for someone else. Post-Final Act, Kohaku & Sango


She can see the cracks in his skin, places where the light shines out like a small sun baked secretly within clay. His eyes seem lit with Kikyou's holy warmth, a glow that bleeds orange-gold through his fingers and his lips and the fatal scar at his throat.

Sometimes she only looks because she can't look away, unable to fathom just how completely her brother has been dissected and remade and taken apart again. She remembers the weight of his small body tucked against her chest as she carried him home once (two lifetimes ago, if Kohaku's counting), Hiraikotsu on her back and Kohaku curled silent in her arms. That was before he learned to walk on broken bones, learned to swallow pain with the ease of air.

Oh, but that's not fair. He's never quite learned, has he? He's only walked on because Naraku was there under his skin, pulling tendons like wire strings. Broken bones were no concern when he was numb enough to be a corpse.

So, now what?

Everything he's done, he's done for someone else.

She watches him soak in her comfort from a distance, as still and beautiful as the lilies he used to hide behind. Her heart is tight, her throat tighter, and he looks up with surprise when she says, at last, are you okay?

The light within him is blinding. Sango remembers what it was to see spider legs clicking along inside his brain, to see his smile dripping tears and his tiny child's hands black with blood. She knows the difference between the scars of his own making and the scars made within the blue dark of hanging webs, where the distorted hands of a hanyou lord had been free to rage around her brother's naked throat.

Oh, Kohaku says, but I'm different now. Her heart breaks for the uncertainty of proclaiming himself unchained. Without Naraku, without Kikyou, without Magatsuhi - who is he? What does he have except the echo of another's will, washing him clean only to color him bruised again for the morning?

He says he's ready to return to normalcy, and Sango encourages him where she can, but privately she knows it feels too soon. It might always feel too soon. When he returns from his work shaken to the core, sliced to ribbons and apologizing for his foolishness, she can't look away. She's been in the absence of him too long for the luxury. Something got inside me, he says, again and again like a chant, something got inside my head, but she knows it's not true because she sees in his eyes that he's only mourning. The waking world is new again to Kohaku; he's known nothing so completely as the casual rape of his own mind and the plethora of demons that rushed to claim him. The possibility of nightmares within his long-awaited freedom could only be considered, to him, regression.

Sango tells him that he's only healing, that his special brand of sickness is just a thing of the past. It's a practiced motion when he presses his cheek to her collar, seeking the long-denied warmth of her embrace. Sango presses her fingers into his hair and recalls a childhood whispering bedtime stories, combing rivers for fish and telling him he'd be safe with her, no matter what.

You don't belong to anyone, Sango reminds him now, and he repeats it gratefully: Yes, I don't belong to anyone.

Not anymore.

It shouldn't hurt the way it does, to tell her that.

She walks him to the door where he stands looking for all the world like the last impossibly standing fixture in the aftermath of a hurricane.

Aneue, he starts, but she's a mother now, and a wife. She's full to bursting with love, where does a rotted soul like his have room to nest? It's been years since they sat together, only children, examining their hearts like precious gems in cupped palms. And no matter how she insists, there's still a small part within him that sneers in Naraku's many voices, 'stupid boy, you don't deserve her.'

But Sango does not doubt. Her smile is strong, and her eyes are burning amber. You were always my little brother, she says, because suddenly it seems very important that he remembers. And within that last joyous shard of light, Kohaku knows nothing else.


End file.
